In a time when more than ever America need heroes, baseball still provided them. Ken Burns, Baseball: Shadow Ball, PBS 1994
There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were. Nina Simone
The fictional villain could resemble a hero. Faulks on Fiction 4/4: The Villains, BBC 2011
The heroes you crucify, and the bureaucrats sit out there and tell each other what a great job they’re doing until another city blows up. And then they say, we need more tools. David Schiffers, Investigative Counsel of Bill Clinton
Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, A Modern Prometheus chapter 24 p198
As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero, he no longer is. George Carlin
Heroes are people who have influence probably for good in some way. People you admire for what they have said or for the way they have lived their lives ... People who are what they appear to be. People who disregard themselves very largely – these are my heroes. Joyce Grenfell, televised interview
No More Heroes. The Stranglers
Those who say we are in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look. Ronald Reagan
You have to have the discipline to do what a hero does ... Everybody is a coward more or less. Cus d’Amato
The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A hero is an ordinary person who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. Christopher Reeve
A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom. Bob Dylan
Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1850
Every hero becomes a bore at last. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyper-reality
We cannot have heroes to dine with us. There are none. And were those heroes to be had, we should not like them ... The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good. Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds, 1873
No man is a hero to his valet. Mme Cornuel, 1605-94
A hero is a man who does what he can. Romain Rolland
There are no heroes ... in life, the monsters win. George R R Martin
My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results ... but it is the effort that’s heroic, as I see it. Win or lose, I admire those who fight the good fight. George R R Martin
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be Heroes, just for one day.
And you, you can be mean
And I, I’ll drink all the time
’Cause we’re lovers, and that is a fact
Yes we’re lovers, and that is that.
Though nothing, will keep us together
We could steal time,
Just for one day
We can be Heroes, for ever and ever
What d’you say?
I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing,
nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be Heroes,
just for one day. David Bowie & Brian Eno, Heroes
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost. Arthur Ashe, cited Bob Kelly ‘Worth Repeating: More Than 5,000 Classic and Contemporary Quotes’ 2003
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said that changing the name of Newark Airport to Liberty International Airport would be a way of honoring ‘the more than 3000 heroes who died for their country in the World Trade Center’. Pardon me for pointing this out, folks, but stock traders, clerks, receptionists, cooks, waiters and building maintenance people in the World Trade Center didn’t die for their country. They died because they went to work. Not one of them would have shown up for work that day if you had told them they would die as a result. Try to get your heroes straight.
Not everyone who died in 9/11 was a hero. Hero is a very special word; that's why we reserve it for certain special people ... If everyone’s a hero, then the word doesn’t mean much any more. And sooner or later we’ll have to give the real heroes (the heroic ones) a new name, to distinguish them from the rest of the pack. Too bad ‘superheroes’ is already taken; it would have been perfect. But relax, folks, if I know us, ‘megahero’ can’t be too far over the horizon. Although to be honest, I kind of like the alliteration in ‘hyperhero’. Let’s shoot for that. George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops, 2004, ‘Heroes Who Died for Their Country’
The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example. Benjamin Disraeli
The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule. Miguel de Unamuno
All my heroes are table tennis players. The Office US s4e12: The Deposition, Dwight, NBC 2007
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify – so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. John Keats
You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes. Walter M Schirra
No-one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition were all equally against her. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
She read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives. ibid.
Homes fit for heroes. David Lloyd George
That’s what it takes to be a hero: a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end. Lise Hand
‘Artemesia is groundbreaking in her depiction of women ... as heroes.’ Artemisia: Painting to Survive, Sky Arts 2016
‘Another 100 yard day for Joe Delaney!’ Delaney ***** commentary, ESPN short 2015
He says, I wanna play football. ibid. coach
9.4 hundred yard dash. ibid.
He said, I live for y’all. ibid. family
The happiest guy I’ve ever been around. ibid. player